“you need to seriously cool it with the road rage. i’ve seen your cardiogram, and believe me, one of these days you’re going to hit a ki—–”
when happy slammed on the brakes abruptly, tony braced himself against the collision with his left arm pressed to the seat in front of him. his seat belt held him back securely, but his traumatized arm throbbed regardless. this was definitely the last time he was going to ask happy to chauffeur him anywhere. how fast had they been going? fifteen, maybe twenty miles an hour in this tormenting new york traffic? oddly, he was glad for that; at least they couldn’t have killed that bicyclist, but he didn’t want a lawsuit to be the cherry on top of his shitty afternoon.
grunting, tony unbuckled the seat belt and dragged himself out of the vehicle to check if the pedestrian they had hit wasn’t injured. “hap, call an ambulance,” he said. better safe than to be sorry. paying for the medical fees was the least he could do, even if it had technically been the bicyclist’s fault for crossing at a red light. they’d debate the legalities of everything later.
nothing could have prepared him to see peter bloodied and dirtied on the ground, though. the bicycle was twisted like a pretzel and crushed under the vehicle’s tires, pizza was strewn all over the asphalt, and—–tony couldn’t really process everything individually, just that his first priority was to make sure peter was okay. “parker? what are you—–are you okay?” tony asked urgently. he fished out a handkerchief from his blazer and wiped down peter’s bloody face. he knew peter had taken a lot worse than a beamer going at twenty miles per hour (much, much worse), but the general public didn’t know that. and he was sure peter’s body had to be in some kind of shock if his senses hadn’t cued him for that danger. “no, uh-uh——stop moving, we’re getting you to the hospital,” he said, pressing a hand flat against peter’s chest to keep him from standing. “you were hit by a car, kid. stay down, because you’ll look like a headless chicken if you walk this off fine.” it sounded crass, maybe even a bit insensitive for someone who had just hit the kid with his own vehicle, but it was tony’s surefire way of protecting peter’s identity.
he knew peter was fine, but tony still worried, and felt responsible on behalf of happy’s carelessness. “and we’ll talk about these later,” he said, gathering the spider-man photos that had slipped out of peter’s bag, along with his broken camera. as the paramedics and police arrived to control the situation, tony slipped the photos into the pocket of his blazer quickly, hiding them from view.
tony hadn’t heard from happy about peter in days, but now he was starting to realize that something may be off.
“UH, HI MISTER STARK. Y —yeah yeah yeah, no no, I'm fine!” He could totally get up and walk this off, but Tony was already — was that a handkerchief? “Awe man, you don’t gotta do that! You’re gonna ruin it.” And it felt real expensive. And it was Tony, so it was probably vucana wool, because Tony always had the best and most expensive stuff and Peter found himself pawing it away for that very reason. “If Happy washes that with hydrogen peroxide, it should come ri —” Wait, his assumptions read in surprise on his face as Peter scrambled to cover it, “Unless Happy doesn’t do your laundry — that’s probably dry clean only isn’t it?” Shit, “I’ll pay for it, I promise!” God, and whatever damages to his car.
A little too frantic Pete was looking back over his shoulder to actually check out the car. . . And there was his bike. AWESOME. He’d have to go looking dumpster diving to see if anyone had thrown any out recently, even if they were garbage he could fix it up. Pretzeled bikes were kind of out of his skill set though so THAT was a write off. “Mister Stark — I’m fine — I —” OH RIGHT. SHIT. Peter sighed, eyes rolling back into his head as he fell against the road. “I mean ow, it hurts.” Having an audience was cool sometimes, people there to back up SPIDER-MAN for not actually being a public menace but like, for stuff like this? UNMASKED and STUPID? The pain hardly registered when contending with the embarrassment of TONY finding him like this, of ALL FREAKING PEOPLE. 8.5 MILLION PLUS PEOPLE. What were the freaking ODDS? Well, like, at least half of that being so close to Stark Towers but that didn’t make this any better.
“ — They’re nothing, really, Mister Stark!” But Tony was kind of a genius, so of course he wasn’t going to believe that. Of course this was gonna be another one of those moments that felt like one of Uncle Ben’s old talks. He would have said his dad if not for the fact that THOSE weren’t really something he remembered. Too young. If he played his cards right, he could skip out on an actual trip to the hospital if the paramedics would check him over in the ambulance, but he wasn’t sure how lucky he’d be given how today was KIND OF A SHIT SHOW. “Please don’t call Aunt May, okay?” His eyes were finally opening, chancing a look at Tony not wanting to see the disappointment but NEEDING to make a point. In a much lower whisper away from the growing crowd and medical team that was rapidly closing in on them, “You know I’m gonna be fine, she’s just gonna stress herself out and — “ . . . probably have a heart attack at the fact he’d gotten hurt. Let alone trashed his bike, camera, and dignity all in one day. “She already worries I’m not being safe and —”
“ — I think it looks a lot worse than it is.” So much for that. Peter was mostly talking to the paramedics that had joined his side, all too doting and careful hands and questions coming at him. Maybe a little bit of him was in shock. His head fell to the side, at least the pigeons were having a hayday on the pizza. Nice to know SOMEONE could enjoy it on his dime, since it sure as hell wasn’t him or the college kids that expected their pizza in five minutes. Or the boss that was gonna NOT be happy. “It was my fault, I didn’t see — “ Peter sat up, shaking his head, they didn’t need to get the stretcher out... UGH.
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